‘We were all nearly killed on this job, which was not a good situation to be in’ Who is Arsenal’s Northbanksy? FourFourTwo meets the street artist who switched careers and became a cult figure around the Emirates Stadium

Three decades ago, Arsenal’s North Bank was famously replaced by a giant mural for a full season during redevelopment work at Highbury. More recently, a few more Arsenal-inspired murals have been popping up in north London. The artist’s name? Northbanksy, of course.

Inspired by the legendary Banksy, a mysterious street artist who’s long been daubing walls around the UK, the Gunners fan’s moniker was always going to stick after his guerilla artwork began to be spotted alfresco, too.

Some of his original works included a not particularly subtle ‘KROENKE OUT’ slogan, railing against Arsenal’s American owner. Photos swamped social media – when more graffiti appeared, admirers shared updates on what ‘Northbanksy’ had been up to. Clockendbanksy wouldn’t really have worked as well, after all.

Northbanksy’s become a cult figure among the Arsenal faithful

For a while, the man himself didn’t even realise he’d earned a nickname. “I asked my pals ‘Who’s Northbanksy?’” he tells FFT now. “They said, ‘You are! That’s what everyone is calling you’.” His work is rather more positive these days, endearingly depicting past and present players, fans, boss Mikel Arteta and other staff, in the vicinity of the Emirates Stadium. Even set-piece coach Nicolas Jover has his own mural.

Northbanksy has become a cult figure among Arsenal fans, even if a minority have seemed less enthusiastic – some erroneously claimed he was employed by the club, while others reported him to the police. A key question has remained, though. Who is he?

Before donning his mask and boiler suit, grabbing his equipment and lugging a ladder around, Northbanksy tells FFT he had a long and successful career as an award-winning television documentary journalist and producer.

He’s only spoken briefly in public before and, like the original Banksy, his name remains under wraps, but he says a near-death experience in north Malawi inadvertently led to a seismic career change. There, improbably, he and his crew were nearly murdered after being mistaken for man-eating vampires.

“So, I was at work, and we got accused of vampirism,” he explains – not a sentence we hear very often. “We were all nearly killed on this job, which was not a good situation to be in.”

Northbanksy says he was working to expose gangs who killed to order and traded in human body parts, particularly of young children. He and his team were set upon by a baying mob, who believed them to be linked to the murderers terrorising their village, before beating and stoning them to within an inch of their lives. Bloodied and bruised, they escaped.

As a die-hard Arsenal fan, and not a vampire, the fact that one of his attackers was wearing a Chelsea ‘DROGBA’ shirt only made it worse. Having run into trouble before during his investigative career, Northbanksy quit the profession, even if street art hasn’t been without its incidents, either.

“I liked the Northbanksy identity that people had given me, and I started to think how to use it in a positive way,” he says.

“Granit Xhaka had been getting a lot of abuse and I wanted to show him he still had the love of the club, so I created an image of him where he was making the ‘heart’ sign, and did it near Tottenham’s stadium because Arsenal fans would think it was funny.”

That led to him being arrested, locked up and charged for his graffiti, only for the case to be dropped.

The original Banksy soon popped up with some of his own work in the area. It emboldened his near namesake. “Once he did his work in Islington and the authorities promoted it and protected it – I thought I could do the same,” he says.

“The worst that could happen was they’d take it down. I began working in the tunnel near the stadium with a piece honouring Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, and it grew from there. Now there are more than 20.”

Inspirations have included a young Gunners mascot who went viral for bizarrely squaring up to Spurs’ ahead of a North London Derby earlier this term.

“I did one of the mascot who had a go in the tunnel at Tottenham, and I’ve done some of legendary fans, too,” he says. “It’s not just about celebrating the best players, but people who mean something to Arsenal. That’s why I did Jover, the set-piece coach, when everyone was having a go at him – for doing his job well!”

The future? There’s no desire to stop, with fans queuing up before and after games to have the photo taken in front of their favourite mural.

“I don’t know what the club think of me, but I’d be happy to work with them,” he says. “My work gives people a smile on their way to matches. It’s all from a place of love.”